As a carer I found Celia Dale's book A Helping Hand (1966/2022) a strangely uncomfortable read. Its a tale of the banality of evil, with a couple taking advantage of vulnerable old women they move into their house & slowly encourage to die. Its sombre & unsettling fiction which in our age of unpaid carers is a timely criminal trade. Written largely in dialogue this is an all too believable tale of casual sociopaths at work.
@ChrisMayLA6@bookstodon I recall reading Maupassant's little tale "The Cask" (Le fût: I read it in Miss Shelly's Grade 11 class in French) wherein a publican, coveting a widow's property, introduces her to the wonders of calvados and supplies her habit until she freezes to death, and he inherits the property. Found it rather dark at that age, quite run-of-the-mill in my dotage.
I am going to be super busy all day, but this response from the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada just came into my inbox. I argued Public Safety Canada (emergency communications) services were violating privacy laws using corporate social media. They say they don't have jurisdiction to make the call. Would be interested in your guys thoughts on a response before I have time to think on mine. #Fediverse#OpenSocialWeb#Mastodon#Emergencies#Communication.
@chris Gov't of Canada should not be farming essential services of any nature to the profit-driven private sector. This should protect privacy as well as the integrity of the service in question, whatever it is.
Getting another molar pulled on Wednesday. I'll need dentures this year & need #MutualAid help to pay for them - no medical coverage for dentures. I have only few molars left.
My #medical#fundraiser update -
$730 raised of $4,205 goal • 14 donations total.
@msquebanh@chris I don't want free and comprehensive medical care, but I do want to pay into a pool (via taxes) for a system that will accommodate the needs of all without out of pocket expenses with good pay and working conditions for providers of all stripes, and no profits for shareholders or execs. I suspect, though, that it may require a very difficult attitude adjustment on all the Marlboro Men among us.
@LiamEgan@lydialurch@ned@CStamp@dragonfrog@MichaelTBacon@IcooIey@antlerboy
Not always fastest. I was a motorcyclist and expressly bought something with "the snot to get out of its own way, and, occasionally, trouble". It was worth it. Cycles of any kind tend to be invisible to a lot of automobilists, and I have the incidents that bear out this dictum. Most vulnerable has to be most vigilant, and is most deserving of the respect and consideration of all those less vulnerable.
thing my grampa said that stuck on me.
' Jaden, all those white folk in they white churches in mississippi could not give af that black folk were lynched ' those mfs only pray fo they own '. #blackhistorymonth#blackmastodon
@Jaden3 Sadly, I'm not able to just cut the clip here that I need, but I watched this back in '72 and never forgot it. Start at 23:10, and the appropriate clip lasts less than a minute, I believe: https://youtu.be/GMD5Pg-IrTk?si=H3WVQwynwY2bo31d&t=1390
I want to know how we could afford social programs in the '60s and '70s when single income households were the main contributors and today, when we have decades of economic growth and a much larger pool of contributors, our politicians are unable to save those same programs.
The math does not add up - unless those additional contributions are being syphoned off, into offshore and personal accounts for a few - and war. Killing people costs money.
@violetmadder@AnnieBuddy@Di4na
As a middle-ish boomer (1950), it's clear to me that I have been complicit, not because I am an oligarchic business interest, nor a war profiteer, but it took me a long time to strip back the layers of the narrative that conditioned most of our existence and to realize that there had to be significant changes made to both thought and actions if civilization were to persist and thrive. I 've moved well down the energy consumption scale, along with the stuff consumption scale, and made it a point to school myself (getting others to school me through their writings) and to share what little wisdom I can garner with others. Evidence is that I'm not seriously denting the ironclad cocoon of western perception and action, but I'll keep at it, and I do see the odd kindred spirit keen to engage in the striving for a different version of how we walk on the planet. It's a little frightening to think that there was such a thing as Honourable Poverty when I was growing up, laced with the hope and likely expectation that there was a decent path to some form of abundance. I suspect we have divided society in to stark have/have not categories, and it has been thus for long enough that many have known anything different. We are not in a good place when hope becomes a rare commodity.
@AnnieBuddy@violetmadder@Di4na
Definitely social frameworks are, and have been under attack since the inception of the New Deal in the States, and national programs in other Western nations. It really stood out in the 1964 presidential tilt with all the talk of a "surplus of democracy" on the part of Goldwater and his ilk. It started to gather steam under Nixon, and has become bolder and bolder, particularly when Dem interregna have been charactized by Dems who out-Thatchered Republicans, and the same is true of Liberal gov'ts in Canada who have promised socially oriented policy, but, once elected, cut social programs and dole out large wads of cash for business concerns. Also happening/happened in UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Greece. Lot of uphill slogging in front of us.
I've been wanting to make a Beef Wellington ever since I had one at The Rubens in London (seriously best meal I've ever eaten, and most expensive, lol)
All recipes call for prosciutto though and when I make it it'll be for someone who eats kosher-ish.
What else could I use? Seems weird to wrap a beef roast in pastrami. And I am struggling to think of something with that cured, salty buttery-ness that would work.
@MsHearthWitch It's a bad joke, sorry. Beef Wellington is a treat, but I haven't made it since 1984. Friend showed up for a visit with a bottle of Pauillac and we had to do something equally expensive and silly.
@MsHearthWitch Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Moshe Dyan was one of the most successful generals in the Six Day War in 1967. I suspect that there might have been Bayonne ham in the original beef Wellington, so the pastrami would be in keeping with the cultural shift.
Thanks to anyone and everyone who followed along with my revolution/protest/stick-it-to-the-man themed #DgarRadio session this Friday night!
Remember that all songs I toot get added to playlists on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music, so subscribe to them if you like these weird and varied selections! Big continuing love to you all!
♥️💜💙💚💛
@dgar Perhaps it's just me, but one song can evoke a whole vein of others, each of which can branch off in a new direction, and I find that these branchings tug at me and make me chafe at a pre-determined playlist. I still shudder at the old AM radio days when there was a playlist, too short, that got played to death and only the insertion of the occasional oldie broke up the monotony. Occasionally, a new station would pop up, but almost inevitably fell into the same trap of endless repetition. I have LPs going back to 1957, a passel of CDs, and a couple hundred thousand MP3/Flac files, and I still run to YouTube and Apple Music at times...
@seachanger This includes pursuing solutions to huge and urgent crises by inadequate means, kicking the can down the road, stalling, deflecting, being an incrementalist, sacrificing action to relationship building.
@DrTCombs
This is probably a good indicator that your kid will be a well-adjusted if somewhat out-there sort of a person. I got brought up on Tom Lehrer and Mose Allison, have been whacko (quietly) all my life and have managed to navigate society without too much kerfuffle.
@DrTCombs
I was referring to the song. I think I saw part of a video clip when hanging with my grandkids a few years back. Obviously, the idea stuck. And I tend to be an associator.
Swedish authorities are threatening Greta Thunberg with a prison sentence — while the real criminals, the owners of the fossil fuel companies and the multinational corporations, are making 💵 millions of dollars 💵 every day by destroying the ecosphere that Greta Thunberg and others are trying to protect.
Removing The Headphone Jack Is About Planned Obsolescence, Not “Courage”
"In this article, we will uncover the real motive behind removing the headphone jack from mobile phones. Contrary to what companies may say, it’s not about bravery or driving innovation. Instead, it’s all about planned obsolescence – the deliberate act of designing devices to become obsolete and force consumers to upgrade."
Start by ending...fossil fuels. Jeez Louise, I remember when greed wasn't good, or at least people wouldn't glorify greed, and before bumper stickers trumpeting that he who dies with the most toys wins.
The gross imbalances of cancer research must be addressed - Global cancer-research ecosystems invest billions of dollars in the development of oncological medicines and technologies, such as robotics and radiotherapy, yet comparatively little into programmes that aim to advance affordable, equitable and high-quality care and outcomes. The extraordinary growth in public and private expenditure on cancer discovery science and technologies, fuelled by the huge profits of cancer biopharmaceutical companies, has failed to create more opportunities for research in neglected areas. #Cancer#CancerCare#CancerResearch#BigPharma#researchhttps://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02609-2
@bleakfuture@johnettesnuggs@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned
Citizenship is one of the areas covered broadly in some of those books that a lot of folks might not otherwise read, books that deal with all manner of relationships and might form and inform the core of discussions about civics, responsibility, community interactions, personal relationships, history, geography, ethics...It's the meaning in the books rather than the content. Heck, there are even many cautionary tales about the pitfalls of financial chicanery and not all of them have Horatio Alger outcomes. One of the killers is repetition: US history in Grades 5, 8 and 11 with a heavily US centered Civics course in Grade 12, without mentioning the amount of fable and outright lies in what constitutes a lot of curriculum. There are ways to make all of this work a lot more in the long-term interest of students (hence parents and society in general), as well as allowing generous allotments of time and resources for a bit of foreign language, music, plastic arts and various pre-vocational courses where students learn to make stuff and repair it. Sorry about bending your eyeballs, but there's a lot to chew on!
@bleakfuture@johnettesnuggs@girlfreddy@QueenValhalla@ned
Note that your kids are getting most all of the really essential stuff from home. The social interactions happen at school, including learning to exist in a highly hierarchical environment and dealing with a variety of personalities and backgrounds. Right on about Civics 12 and sex ed. It's always interesting to see what happens with young folks whose parents have pulled back the curtain without necessarily plotting the dance.